Fundamentalism Vs. Wonder

I am accustomed to defending conservative Protestants (Evangelicals, Reformed, fundamentalists, and so forth) because I know many of them, and I know they get a raw deal from many in our secular liberal media culture. It’s not because I agree with them on everything, of course, but because I know that they are more complicated than many of their critics think — and often a lot more big-hearted. Yet it is also true that I have no deep experience with the harsher side of this culture. Almost all of my experience with these Protestant co-religionists has been pleasant, grace-filled, and upbuilding. I know this isn’t the whole truth. There is no subculture, religious or secular, that doesn’t have its nasty extremes. My point is that it’s often the case when I see conservative Protestants talked about in the media, I see a caricature that I know to be untrue, and I naturally want to push back against that. This is why I felt obliged recently to defend Marco Rubio and the Young Earth Creationist crowd, even though I believe they are quite wrong on the science, and on what ought to be taught in schools.

I should say that I didn’t grow up within a culture that valued this rigid, hard-edged expression of Christianity, so I am admittedly insensitive to the unpleasant realities within certain corners of conservative Protestantism. My wife did grow up more or less in that world, and has a much more jaundiced view of it. She remains conservative in her Christianity, but gets emotional when she talks about the fear (her word) that comes with fundamentalism and the more rigorous forms of Evangelicalism. I hear her talk about some of the things she heard and did in various church and parachurch organizations as a kid, and it floors me. Somebody of my background only really sees the good side of all that, not because that’s the only thing I want to see, but because I have never traveled in those circles (the closest I came was a couple of years in my adolescence, but that involved only reading books), so my experience with those folks has truly only been good.

I say all this as prelude to my telling you about something that happened yesterday that really bothers me. I’m not going to name names, because I don’t want to stir this particular pot any more than it has been stirred. Let’s just say that I read a book by an Evangelical author with whose work I was unfamiliar. She writes about her experience of God in a sacramental way — that is, how her experience of the beauty of creation awakened something in her, and brought her closer to God through her awareness of His presence in the natural world, and in the world of things His people have made to His glory. It’s the kind of thing that’s an ordinary part of Catholic and Orthodox theology and spirituality, and I thought she wrote beautifully about this awakening.

When I googled around trying to find out more about this writer, I was shocked — honestly shocked — to find so many articulate, educated Protestant pastors and writer cutting loose on her as if she were some sort of New Age crystal guru. It was very, very harsh stuff. Of course one doesn’t expect fundamentalists and other very conservative Protestants to agree with traditional sacramental theology, and I certainly see grounds for criticism of this writer’s book, at least from a conservative Protestant perspective. What shook me up was the vehemence of the theological attacks on this writer, and the absolute — absolute! — insistence that the kinds of things she identifies smack of “mysticism,” and are the first step to becoming a New Ager.

They are right: this writer does come from a mystical standpoint, but in that she is well within the tradition of the Christian church. The criticism of her work seemed to come from writers whose theology seemed to make no space for any kind of mystery, and certainly not for emotion. It was dry and syllogistic, and to this outsider, came across as extremely suspicious of joy. I thought of the film Breaking The Waves, and how the hardcore Scots Calvinist community in that film could not handle any expression of spirituality outside of its strict conceptual confines. One of the critics of this writer spited her for discerning something holy in an old Catholic cathedral, given how “pagan” the Roman church is.

I’m pretty sensitive to New Age mumbo-jumbo with a Christian gloss, and had this writer struck me as that sort of Christian, I would have picked up on it. Rather, she came across to me as someone with an acutely artistic sensitivity, and a passionate longing for communion with God in all her senses — a longing she communicates movingly, I thought. Here is a person who found holy joy in God’s grandeur. Her writing reminded me of the famous G.M. Hopkins poem:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

She captures some of this in her writing — and there her people were, beating the heck out of her for stepping outside their narrow theological boundaries. (What did old Hopkins know? He was a Jesuit priest, after all). I don’t know this writer, but the nature of the blows she took, and the extraordinary lack of charity with which they were struck, given the irenic qualities of her writing, made me upset on her behalf, and even moved to the point of tears. I thought: if the God of these stern and severe men were the only God I was ever shown, I doubt I would ever have become a Christian, because God would have seemed to me to be grim and gradgrinding.

I hesitated to post this, because I don’t want the thread below to become an opportunity to beat up on conservative Evangelicals, who almost never catch a break in our media. Besides, I assure you that you can find extremely rigid, legalistic Catholics and Orthodox. Plus, nearly all of us, no matter how broad our own convictions may be, have been harshly judgmental from time to time (in certain conditions, the self-consciously “non-judgmental” folks can be the most judgmental people you’ll ever see). And finally, I think the Christian world in our time and place faces a greater danger from a lack of theological rigor than its opposite.

All that said, this experience yesterday made me angry and discouraged, chiefly because what these well-meaning pastors are doing, whether they realize it or not, is anathematizing awe and wonder, which is the beginning of a living faith, and making people whose souls are drawn closer to their Creator through the experience of beauty ashamed of it. This experience made me more empathetic with people who have fallen away from the faith, or who have gone to the opposite liberal extreme within Christianity, because of bad experiences with this kind of thing. I wanted to post this to say that I now have more understanding of where Turmarion was coming from in the YEC argument in this space, given his direct experience in Appalachia with fundamentalist rigorism.

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108 Responses to Fundamentalism Vs. Wonder

“what these well-meaning pastors are doing, whether they realize it or not, is anathematizing awe and wonder”

Yes.
I was raised Evangelical, am 27, Brazilian, an Apostles Creed Christian when asked. Haven’t belonged to a church in about a decade.
It isn’t much different here. Our Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians hail from American or British missions about one and a half centuries back. And then there’s all the non-denominational churches.
(And the freakish megachurches with giant temples and televised exorcisms, like this church called the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which features giant kitschy church facades and weirdly edited TV shows, a real treat. But that’s the more frightful end of it.)
Anyway: Is it okay to call it “phillistinism”, this great aesthetic poverty of the Evangelical traditions? It sounds snobbish and I’m wary of that, but I have always noticed it and it has always bothered me.
As a kid I just I found it tacky, uncomfortable. Bless those people’s hearts, if their hearts are truly in it, but corny praise songs, plastic chairs, boring sermons, ugly temples: I don’t mean to be a jerk, but why. Just why?
Again, I’ve read enough Chesterton to know of the dangers of aestheticism. But this poverty in my tradition, in the spectrum of churches I was raised to believe are the *only* true churches, led me to some weird, painful existential wonderings.
The whole thing seems a bit perverse. One starts to half-unconsciously suspect that Beauty must be sinful. That Beauty and Truth have got to be opposites. There seems to be a tacit veto on Beauty all around you. Everything is kind of tacky: the books, the churches, the liturgy, and that seemingly of necessity. I sensed a strange perversity in this. Like it was kind of on purpose. And this, this tackiness, this ugliness, attached to the name of God, to the imperative to serve God.
And I did endeavour to serve God, and I would not be going too far if I said I botched my own creative and aesthetic inclinations in the process, out of some ill-defined feeling, indeed, that I simply ought to do so. Like there was something suspicious about beauty.
I mean, when I was 16 I made a bonfire of the vanities with Pixies and Radiohead cds. Then I joined a boys’ Bible group about the dangers of masturbation in a tackily decorated living room.
I’m ranting. It’s a touchy subject. And it feels mean-spirited to speak this way of people who I do consider my brethren. But it’s an oppressive thing, this attitude which I’ve lived with my whole life, so yeah, sorry, but you know.

Joe: Of course I could just be sensitive to the issue since I myself have been criticized for not appreciating the “artistic sensitivity” of the post-evangelicals who are rejecting the Word of God for whatever happens to be faddish among the cool kids.

I know you’re at a disadvantage here, Joe, because I’m not giving specifics. Maybe I’m wrong not to talk about the specifics, but like I said, I feel weirdly protective of this writer, and besides, I don’t really want to talk about her book, but about the quality of the critiques, and what it says about a certain kind of Christian way of seeing the world. The critics accuse her of being a “mystic” — a word that they seem to use to describe anyone who does not derive crystal-clear and rock-solid truths directly from Scripture, with no ambiguity. The idea that the author could write favorable of Catholic architecture sent one critic around the bend, wondering about the author’s stance on salvation if she could find anything godly about a godless papist temple.

The Incarnation (Jn 1:14) offers the principal that we receive grace through the senses, being created by God as the union of the spiritual and physical. He has met his people right where He created them- in the spiritual and the physical.

“God-as-Redeemer does not ignore what God-as-Creator has done”…G.K. Chesterton

I think the fundementalist view is far more sophisticated and realistic appraisal of the means retaining the truth of truth claims of the Bible than is the give and inch because that inch doesn’t really matter anyways approach. I mean Pascal and Kierkegaard stress (Kierkegaard repeatedly) that if the fall is not a historical event then much of Paul’s reasoning does not make sense. One cannot reason allegorically and the epistles are nothing but Paul’s piecemeal reasoning through of the implications of Christ’s message for the world. Sin cannot simply be hamartia or error. To equate them is to precisely eradicate the importance of sin.

Down Rod’s path lays Crowe Ransom’s argument in Gods without Thunder namely that if we don’t really believe in Gods we better at least make them scary. It is precisely the undisputed conception of Christ and his Word as infallible which cleared space in the world for a message of sacrificial love and agape. One can only love God when one is absolutely sure God has sought love rather than fear.

[Note from Rod: Just so you know, the fundamentalists aren’t the only Christians who believe in the Fall. Other Protestant churches teach it as well. Catholicism teaches it. Orthodoxy teaches it. One doesn’t have to believe that there was an apple in the garden moment to believe that in some sense, there was a real Fall — a real moment in which mankind lost communion with God. The fundamentalist mindset seems to me to say that *if* one doesn’t believe in the literalness of Genesis, then nothing about Christianity can be said to be true. — RD.]

I come from the Catholic tradition, and I’ve found the suspicion of joy of any kind leaking in there too. Gregorian chant was thrown out during the 60’s for lumpy, bland “modern” songs, and new churches are more bare-bones than the lovely old ones. My mother was even suspicious of food that tasted too good: “You should live to eat, not eat to live”. Her spice cabinet consisted of salt, pepper, and cinnamon, and those were used sparingly. And the whole freakout about Sandra Fluke. Agree or disagree about her views that her fellow student with polycystic ovary syndrome should have her medication covered by the insurance she pays for, but the shrieking that she’s a slut because of her words about insurance regulation, sounds like they’re more worried that someone is having fun and sex than they are about insurance regulation.

Perhaps Rod has hit upon the publicly veiled thread which seems to run deep throughout most evangelicals, a lack of open-mindedness for expression of belief which is different from their own. Most of us have our own theological bias it doesn’t make us bad people. In the case of the evangelicals it simply makes it difficult to attract others to their organizations. Jesus said he was the way the truth and the life, but he never discouraged any true believer. Unfortunately religions have complicated this simple message with their own dogma and theology. Each seemingly thinks their truth and their way is somehow better than the others.
Hopefully one day we will all recognize the basic spiritual truths we all have in common and self-serving dogma and theology will be discarded.

Rachel Held Evans has said and done some pretty vile things herself towards those who disagree with her, so the situation is not exactly parallel.

In the situation referred to above, she whipped up a storm around the author, citing a quote from an old book of his that she thought sexist, calling on people to get angry, which they predictably did, calling him a rape apologist and such. He responded in kind. Maybe he shouldn’t have done that, but he was drawn into the situation by Evans and her followers.

Rachel Held Evans’ actual book is pretty even tempered, but she had already built up a considerable amount of ill will beforehand, including the incident above, so it isn’t surprising that the book was not well received by many.

One of the reasons that I became disillusioned with Evangelicalism as a student was just this narrowness of vision. The church I first attended as an undergraduate, for instance, was so anti-mystical and prosaic that it didn’t even have a cross (and I do mean cross, as distinct from crucifix. I can understand not having a crucifix – but not having a cross at all). Anything that smacked of sacramental understandings of grace or life was rejected.

A particular incident that really crystallised the problem was when the university Christian Union – really the university Calvinist Evangelical Union – refused to give any support or encouragement to the Catholic Mission Week. I was involved with the CU’s leadership in a small way at that time, so I saw some of the emails that explained the reasoning, such as it was, behind the reluctance. The ignorance and sectarianism about Catholicism was shocking.

What really seemed to raise Evangelical hackles (apart from the general suspicion to Catholic faith and practice common among Oxford evangelicals) was that the Catholic evangelisation approach deviated slightly from their approved formula, i.e. packing people into a hall and having a skilful expositional preacher explain the Gospel or outline the evidence for Christianity for an hour. The Catholic Mission Week, among other things, invited people to pray in their chapel; to have an introduction to contemplative prayer; to have a series of small talks on aspects of Catholicism; to explore the Catholic faith journey.

Now granted that is very different from the Evangelical approach, of Billy Graham-style talks in the town hall and crowded lecture theatres, with a call to conversion at the end. It’s a different culture, a different theology. But I honestly don’t believe that it is a bad way of evangelising people, and to ignore and belittle it because it doesn’t suit a particular mindset is really foolish.

I have huge admiration and respect for that way of reaching out to people. I grew up with Evangelicalism. My mother is an Evangelical and so are my brothers – my older brother is an elder of his church. The Catholic Church can learn a lot from Evangelicalism.

But that learning process needs to be a two-way street. Real Christianity didn’t start in 1518.

I fear the basic problem is that these individuals think, unwittingly perhaps but surely, that God is disembodied. God instead is locked up in the heavenly box of their making; He deigns not come to earth to commune with us, by sacramental means. It is all too unbelievable, this idea of the Godhead now imbued with human flesh, Who comes to earth through the mysterious means of graced bread and wine.

Logically enough, it soon becomes too unbelievable, for a majestic and sovreign God to come to earth, soiling the swaddling clothes which wrap inside a cow’s food-bin; to expend some blood, sweat and tears for the world’s behalf, on a piece of raw timber.

I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out who you’re discussing which is essential to assessing the criticism in my opinion. If so, she is a member of an orthodox (small o) denomination and her books are sold by that denomination, so it is unlikely she is a blatant heretic. If she were to denounce the Trinity, for example, I’m sure her denomination and audience wouldn’t just stand by. In general, sensible Independent and Bible Church types don’t criticize the denomination for heresy. They criticize it for not being separatist enough and lacking discernment. The criticism here is more along the discernment lines. That the denomination is failing to discern and/or tolerating error. But that, off course, is what Independent types do. That is what makes them Independent.

There is also the gender issue in that this female is allowed to teach men. That women shouldn’t hold certain offices in the Church is, I believe, clear in Scripture. Whether they can teach men outside of an office is debatable, but that they shouldn’t is certainly a Biblically supportable position.

I do think there is a tendency among some Independent types to seek out error among the non-independents as a way of reinforcing their decision to be independent. This tendency can border on nit-picking. And I think their criticisms would often be more productive if it was approached in a more even-handed manner and not just declared. That said, I’m not all that familiar with this person’s teachings, but from the criticisms I’ve read I do think there are legitimate reason’s for concern as well as the gender issue.

So there are two issues that need to be separated – the tone and style of the criticism and the actual theological issues involved. You shouldn’t let concern about the former lead you to dismiss the latter.

She receives the criticism with such grace, I really wonder how they can write their critiques without blushing. I see it as a symptom of the current culture of blogging and “celebrity” pastors, where everyone feels they must have an opinion on everything and must state their opinion in the most offensive way possible. It’s as if they fear something might be out there that bears the name Christian, that doesn’t exactly line up with their idea of Christian, so they attack the Christianity of the writer. So each of them must line up and take their shots lest someone think they might agree with the book. And in that insular world of blogging, you’ll get such strange comments as, “So and so has been strangely quiet on this issue.” which just drives the whole cycle.

I am convinced that if we chase down the Good, the True, and the Beautiful with any diligence and sincerity, we eventually meet the domini canes (the “hound of God”) who pursues us until we eventually find that the paths of all three converge and become one.

And His name is Jesus Christ… the Logos… the Word of God. God made flesh. God made realized in his own Creation. God made manifest to the human mind in ways that uplift the meek and childlike and humble the proud and world-weary.

And what is more, this Man-God is sacrificed on account of us, by us, yet for our sakes. But why? Because our sensations of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are so damned fleeting. Because we are stained with sin, and perversely prefer our own diminishment over the Love that lies at the heart of Being, and that transforms all things to their implicit perfection, or else destroys them in the fire to which all sin tends.

And when some of us realize this, we start to crave a formula—some manufactured process—that will stimulate this realization in others. But that’s not how it works. It’s all in His time, not ours.

Calvinism, Islam, the Jansenist heretics in my own tradition and all the fidestic creeds that reject the Western synthesis of faith and reason, piety and creation, mysticism and beauty, and which instead demand total surrender to some rigid pattern all fail to recognize that He is present in His creation, that His goal is to redeem that creation from the sin implicit in freedom, and thus make His entire creation truly free.

Strangely, some can awaken to this through some dry bounded formula, but most cannot. Most need to begin with the search for the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. Christians must encourage this even when it leads to false starts, and fitful heresies. Trust in God. Remember that Grace builds on nature.

Remember that:
“All shall be well; all shall be well; and all manner of things shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich)

I’m glad you posted this (and do kind of wish you mentioned the name of the book, but can understand why you didn’t). I know others have already said this in effect, but I’ll say it too: I grew up in that rigid Fundamentalism — albeit not nearly as rigid as some others I’ve read about — and found it to be lacking in the arts, indeed skeptical of them.

I ended up getting an art degree nonetheless (the creative side of things is in my blood, me and all of my siblings studied art or design in college), but continued to be frustrated with the attitudes among some fellow Christian artists in the church. And by then I was in a very large church in a larger town that actually had a group for artists and was hanging art in their hallways.

Anyway, because of these (very abbreviated) experiences, I’ve had it in my mind for years now to found some sort of art center that helps Christians address these issues. I know others are doing it by now, though such opportunities were scant when I graduated from college.

Thanks again for sharing. A balanced perspective and something a lot of people are working through in their lives, even if it isn’t most people in the church.

“What shook me up was the vehemence of the theological attacks on this writer, and the absolute — absolute! — insistence that the kinds of things she identifies smack of “mysticism,” and are the first step to becoming a New Ager.”

This is not surprising, since fundamentalism is really “superficialism”, focusing as it does on history, fact, and morality, all of which (tho’ let’s give them their due) are on the surface of religion. True mysticism is the heart and goal of religion — to regain lost spiritual knowledge; all the rest is ancillary. “This is eternal life: that they should know Thee, the one true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” The Fathers are certainly mystical, with a mysticism that has nothing to do in se with emotion.

Goodness – Rod, you certainly managed to set up a thoughtful, considered dialog here.
Which is a good thing.

You and I are about at far apart within Christian belief on civil rights for women and gays and American politics in general as we can get.

We are in agreement on the Symbolum Nicaenum, and we both firmly believe that salvation through grace really, truly means Jesus’ grace towards us, not anything, at all, we can do, to earn it.
Oh, and on not torturing people. That’s the bravest thing you’ve ever published, given that in the conservative world that was (is? I fear still ‘is’) anathema.

If we can still talk to each other, as Christians, despite disagreement on two topics which are key to the culture wars, then perhaps all is not yet lost among us.

I understand and agree with your desire not to publish the name of the author whose work has been so harshly attacked. Frankly, I am glad you’ve been pushed into examining the far right among Christian politics.

Would you be open to sending those of us who are curious about the book a link to it in a private email? Not only would I – and I am sure everyone else – respect your wishes to keep the matter private, but you filter comments here.

Of course I could just be sensitive to the issue since I myself have been criticized for not appreciating the “artistic sensitivity” of the post-evangelicals who are rejecting the Word of God for whatever happens to be faddish among the cool kids.

They could possibly be right, though. Particularly Calvinism which, while much more theologically rigorous than Evangelicalism, has a sort of stern, anti-artistic reputation that has been covered at length in this very thread.

I just went back to do some research on them, and they’re all non-denominational, Bible-church style Protestants.

Oh hey, this was the kind of church I grew up in. No wonder all this sounds familiar and unsurprising, while at the same time dismaying. The folks in my congregation were mostly kind and loving, but they sure could get rigid in their thinking and narrow in their theology. Ugh. Like Rod, I also feel compelled to defend them against attack based on stereotype, but I feel awfully disappointed in them when they do this.

As much as anything else, it was the fear of different ideas that ultimately drove me away. Not just considered rejection of other ideologies, but the fear of even seriously engaging them — as if one might be convinced (i.e. deceived, in their view) if one looked too closely. I guess that’s a legitimate fear if your greatest desire is to continue to believe to what you have been told you must believe in order to avoid Hell. It shows a profound lack of trust in God’s grace, if you think about it.

I was turned off by fundamentalism (and unfortunately all Christianity until much later) at the age of 17, and although, like Rod, have met many wonderful individuals, there are so many more that have the legalistic, unloving attitude of the self-described “Bible” Christian.

As Mr. Guyton mentions, Christians are not going to save the souls of the younger generation now coming out into the world (or save some of us older folks who realize that the 50’s are in the past), unless they can speak to where they ARE, and with LOVE. Otherwise, the faith will become increasingly irrelevant.

Matthew 23:27: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness”.

Scissortail, I can so relate, as someone also with an art background. I just compare Precious Moments with the Sistine Chapel, which is one big reason why I converted to Catholicism and rejected fundamentalism.

Actually, I don’t think it is true that Reformed types are inherently anti-art or whatever. In fact, the oposite may be true. There is a divide between conservative Reformed types and Fundamentalists over how we should view and interact with the larger culture. Fundamentalist generally view the culture as corrupting and something to be separated from. This is why they often create their own alternative culture (music, college, movies, theme parks, etc.) that is explicitly Christian. This may have something to do with their “pessimistic” view of the end-times. (Reformed types certainly like to blame their end-times theology.)

Reformed types, on the other hand, view the larger culture as something to be captured and Christianized. So instead of creating an alternative culture, they want to participate in and impact culture. Instead of wanting Christian art or Christian movies, they want art and movies that are Christian if you understand my distinction. This may have something to do with their ultimately “optimistic” view of the end-times. Since Reformed types have a high view of the sovereignty of God, they are inclined to see God in nature, man’s handiwork, etc. and are critical of what they see as the anti-materialism of Fundamentalism that they will often claim borders on Gnostic.

What Reformed types are, and I think this is what is being gotten at, is rigorously rationalistic. They would certainly be skeptical of anything in the way of a private revelation being passed on as authoritative. Hence, I suspect, the reason many assumed a critique of mysticism was coming from the Reformed crowd.

Rod, first of all, this was a great post, and these are fantastic comments.

But I think you’re making a mistake, when you insist on not naming the author you have in mind. You have published comments that have speculated on who the author is, and two women have been named: Ann Voskamp, and Rachel Held Evans. I think it would be better for you to name the person (and her work), and end the speculation, or at least make it clear that you are not talking about the ones who have been named.

You say that you feel protective, but my guess is that the various comments on the author here will be much more civil than what you have observed in other places. More importantly, there are some of us who are attracted to the author and her work, based on what you describe. I for one would love to read her, and come to my own conclusions. Some of the other commenters obviously have the same reaction.

At this point, you’re not gaining anything by “protecting” the author, who probably has thicker skin than you assume. Let’s just be transparent about this, and have an honest conversation about the actual work in question.

I think that this is one area where you have to give the Creationists/Intelligent Design enthusiasts credit. Almost any person who is seriously about writing apologetics for any sort of miraculous Creationism tends to note the wonder of creation, and how beautifully well, e.g., the body structures of insects work.

Well said. Dogma and doctrine are all a matter of shoving God into boxes measured by human reason, and God will not be contained.

You need some dogma and doctrine for faith. Hinduism and Christianity cannot both be true. I fear that this sort of thinking tries for a “larger” God, but winds up with a smaller one, a God whose being adjusts to whatever someone thinks is correct.

That is not to say that God is comprehendable by human minds; but we can understand things about him to be true or false.

Anyone chanting about “the heresy of…” is committing heresy, by themselves fostering factions within the faith by insisting that their own limited understanding is the sum total of what God has to offer.

Well, no. There are people who claim to be Christian and who preach things that are not Christian. The Bible warns us away from false teachers, and there is nothing wrong with pointing out heresy where it exists. Having said that, it is important to distinguish between doctrinal disagreements that are important and those which are minor (e.g. is the first horseman of the Apocalypse Christ, the Antichrist, the attempts at human-imposed world peace, or something else), and in particular which ones are blatantly un-Christian (e.g. denying that Jesus is the Son of God) and which could be troublesome but are not essential (is salvation revocable)?

Absolutely. No group can exist without defining what it means to be a member of that group, and what it means to be on the outside. One of the most annoying things about religious liberals, at least within Christianity, is that they often go on and on about being “inclusive,” but when they have power they lay down hard and fast rules that result in excluding those who don’t meet their doctrinal standards.

The important distinction here is that doctrine is not sufficient. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. God cannot be contained within doctrinal statements. A portrait of one’s mother is a likeness of one’s mother, and will help you pick her out in a crowd, but it is not the same as one’s mother.

Jesus pointed to the boundaries within which Christians much live. He said clearly that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. He also repeatedly made clear that one can be doctrinally correct and still be completely corrupt (“whitewashed tombs”). The purpose of religion is to convert the heart. If doctrine and dogma do not convert the heart and lead one closer to union with the All-Holy, then they are a stumbling block. Yet the absence of doctrine and dogma is also a stumbling block, because we are left without any idea what God “looks like,” or expects us to become.

Mr. Dreher was not talking about Rachel Held Evans in the original post. But Evans together with the author he was talking about were being held up as examples of how the Protestant fundamentalists were oppressing women writers. That may be the case, but the fact is that Evans is not a particularly gracious, even tempered writer, but instead a quite pugnacious polemicist, so I don’t think she can be used as an example in that way.

geronimo: Not only christianity… Paganism and syncretisms (like the ones here in Brazil) also suffer from lack of theology. Your observation is accurate, but I don’t think it really follows the main premise here. I will briefly give you one Pagan’s perspective, not wanting to load an already-long thread up with new tangents.

The duality I suggest is that there are two broad categories of faith: revealed faith from external sources, mostly holy texts and indoctrination (no pejorative implications intended here!); acquired faith, one that comes from experiences and wells up from the heart and soul. Neither is complete without the other. How much one overshadows the other is an indicator of what sort of belief system is in play, not necessarily a criticism of imbalance.

I and my Pagan siblings in faith lean very heavily on experiential faith, and quite a few of them (myself included) are intellectually hostile to dogma. We frequently aim that hostility at holy texts. We are not, I assure you, lacking in theological exploration and debate, we just tend to abandon or prohibit some branches of the semantics.

You will please correct me if I’m mistaken, but your use of “theology” falls under revealed faith, and the unnamed author’s writing falls under acquired faith. Her critics, I suggest, are either ignorant of or wilfully ignoring the balance.

Charles: When my first book came out I had New Agers and Pagans chewing the carpet in their rage. Trust me, their teeth are so jagged and crusty they need more of that, not less. 😉

There is only one thing I enjoy more than feeling the beauty and awe of immanent divinity all around me, and that’s sharing it and discussing it with a person of an entirely different belief system than mine.

Following on Rod’s reply in agreement to Glaivester’s: You need some dogma and doctrine for faith.

I cannot overlook his next sentence: Hinduism and Christianity cannot both be true.

I’ve made my personal peace with this, though the vast majority of Pagans who are also ex-Christians cannot forgive their treatment or forget the emotional scars from it that they will carry to their deaths. I really would like to know how a God that invites, bordering on demands, humility can be used to support the hubris of this tenet of Christianity?

They say it takes two to tango, but this “ours is the one Truth” notion breaks that rule. We sit here with Rod watching the Islamist revolutions and say “See? They are so convinced of their Truth nothing can get them to stop.” Christianity, for all its advanced maturity compared to Islam, and its eschewment of violence, cannot avoid the exact same criticism.

I apologize for a very fuzzy memory of from whom I heard this, but I clearly remember a Jesuit’s words to me.

“That I expect to see the Son greeting me in Heaven in the name of His Father, does not prohibit me from celebrating your expectation of being greeted by a flower-garlanded Lady and her antler-crowned Lord to the Summerlands.”

For those not familiar, the latter description is of a basic belief of Wiccans. In one brief statement, he debunked the notion that anything not Christian was a delusion perpetrated by Satan while standing firm in his deeply held beliefs. He inspires me to add: Be right. Be convinced of the Truth. But you stop being human when you deny me the same journey to my own destination.

One of the things I am looking forward to when we all get to heaven will be the looks on everyone’s faces when we all discover that each of us (including me) managed to not get everything just exactly right. Those of us who try to be humble and already are aware of this possibility will probably be bemused as well as relieved to finally be set straight, and it will be delightful to see that our God is not only infinitely kind hearted and forgiving, but might even be somewhat bemused by this all Himself. As for God’s attitude toward the bitter, angry, hateful judgmentalism displayed by so many that seem to be oh so certain of their own personal infallibility, however, that just might be a different story.

I agree totally with the author. Something brings one closer to the Absolute and they get railed. Religious conservatives are so narrow minded, uncompromising and even barbaric in some cases (and I’m politically conservative) that all one can do is feel sorry for them. No matter, they’re on the decline anyhow – with good riddance.

Well, Rod, I can’t speak for religious liberals, but I wasn’t trying to. I would agree that to be Christian, you must start from the premise that Jesus was the Christ, and that he is the founder and finisher of our faith. But, e.g., you can be unitarian or trinitarian, Arian, or Athanasian, Pelagian or anti-, emphasize free grace for all, or predestination. Any of which may be right… or wrong, in whole or in part.

If you are Muslim, you must believe that there is no God but The God (so far, in agreement with Jews and Christians), also that Mohammed is his prophet (a divergence).

I consider The Trinity a case of three blind men feeling an elephant. Hector calls that “The Heresy of Modalism.” I’m not trying to make God as small as me. I’m not even trying to deny you your dogmas. I’m just saying God is bigger than any of us, and your dogmas are what you have grasped, accurately or inaccurately, not The Truth.

If doctrine and dogma do not convert the heart and lead one closer to union with the All-Holy, then they are a stumbling block. Often they do not, and are exactly that. “He has shown you oh man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Add to that two commandments, upon which hang “all the law and the prophets” … the rest is mere detail. (And those two commandments are themselves QUITE A LOT to live up to).

Why is it that “New Age” is “Mumbo-Jumbo” and the Mythology of more established religions not?

I think this gets at the heart of the problem. A fair amount of “New Age” really is mumbo-jumbo. But so is a fair amount of every religion, and even every person. Most of the time, we don’t really know what we are talking about. This is why theology is such an attractive crutch. It makes us feel that we know what we are talking about, that these things have been worked through and made sense of, and established as real and true. But this too is just a way of hiding from our real ignorance of what God actually is, and even worse, of declining to participate in that relationship here and now. Instead, we relate to God through books and scriptures and thoughts in our mind, all organized as if they really mean something.

And then, we have the direct experience of God, and it blows all those words out of the water. It’s like Aquinas’ mystical experience near the end of his life, which made him feel that all his previous theological work was almost pointless in comparison. And that’s what I think Rod is referring to as “awe and wonder”. The direct experience of God is just mind-blowing, whether it’s a New Age experience, a Christian experience, a Hindu experience, or anything else. It puts the mind in its place, at the feet of the Lord. It’s not that the mind is entirely useless, but it’s proper place is not to define God and tell us where it’s all at, but to bow down and serve this overwhelming awe and mystery that is the mind’s only real experienced of God.

It’s kind of like sex. You can read about sex, and think about it, and look at all the pictures. But until you actually have it, all of that is just academic. And when you have it, all your ideas go out the window, because there’s no room in the experience for all that mental stuff. Thinking about sex while having it is the surest way to have bad sex. And thinking about theology while communing with God is a guarantee of bad religion.

There’s a reason why the mystics often compare communion to God to a sexual relationship, even a marriage. Song of Songs. It’s one of the closest analogies. And nobody can ever figure out their wife or husband. They just have to love them as they are. And you have to love God the same way, as He Is. Which means, never really being able to figure it out, and not minding at all, because figuring it out only destroys the mystery, and it never actually figures anything out anyway.

Not that I would dispense with theology. It’s fun, if one approaches it in the spirit of mystery and humor. But there’s a strong tendency to get almost completely lost within it, and within the mind itself, and to close the door to everything else. It’s a Godless refuge, in many respects.

Which is one of the problems with the Protestant Revolution. They rejected the authority of the Church, which is fine on one level, but they substituted for that the authority of the written scriptures, and the mind that interprets these things. It led to a widespread, though not universal, rejection of mysticism, and the direct experience of the awe and wonder of God, which isn’t communicated all that well in words. Art does a better job of it. Which is why the Cathedrals were citadels of art, not of words. The awe and wonder one feels upon entering a Cathedral does a better job of communicating God than a sermon usually does. (Unless maybe it’s Meister Eckardt delivering a sermon)

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches, despite many huge problems and errors in my view, some of which led to the Reformation, at least had a real appreciation for this awe and mystery being the central experience of the religious. Sure, they tended to create endless words themselves, and get lost in theological abstractions and arguments, but at core, the experience was about this awe and wonder and love for God that awakens when you enter into communion. And certainly some Protestants continued to cultivate that feeling as well. But many not only didn’t do that, they became theologically opposed to the whole notion, and antagonist to the experience itself. Big mistake, in my view. But almost every religion has an equivalence to this, it’s nothing unique to Christianity. It’s something in human nature, even in every one of us, that just gets dramatically exaggerated sometimes. Maybe for a whole lifetime. Like everything else, it’s something to learn from.

It shouldn’t be, since the very people of the era of Paul’s Epistles certainly did have women who functioned as missionaries and helped spread the faith. And many a household became Christian because the wife converted and gradually brought her husband and the rest of the family in as well.

No group can exist without defining what it means to be a member of that group, and what it means to be on the outside.

You do understand, that’s the recipe for a cult? Insiders and outsiders, sinners and faithful, the saved and the damned, all of these are ways of dividing people, not uniting them in God. If one look carefully, one will find that each of these distinctions exist in every one of us. Are we to cut off our foot if it smells bad? Or are we to wash it? No religious approach that believes in communion can ever believe that anyone exists outside of God. So in communion, where are the insiders and outsiders? What is the size of God’s Church?

There are of course practical matters in any human grouping. But if those practical distinctions lead one to actually view others as outsiders, one has left communion behind, and “fallen” from grace. That walls of God’s Church are not bound by the walls of our human Churches. A very important point to remember.

A theology that is based on trying to separate some out of God’s Church, is not a theology of communion. You can’t evangelize to people, unless you see them as already standing in God’s Church. For them to convert doesn’t mean leaving one group and joining theirs. It means seeing that one is already in God’s Church, through communion. At least that’s my theology.

Actually they can, unless one takes a literalist approach to everything.

One of my favorite sayings is from Heisenberg, who said that the opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a great truth is another great truth. If one recognizes both Hinduism and Christianity as great truths, rather than merely as collections of true statements, then indeed they can both be true, even if their various statements contradict one another.

“Scissortail, I can so relate, as someone also with an art background. I just compare Precious Moments with the Sistine Chapel, which is one big reason why I converted to Catholicism and rejected fundamentalism.”

In the church I grew up in – a weird mixture of contemporary, trying-to-be-trendy Evangelicalism, and rigid fundamentalism – I was constantly in trouble. As an aspiring novelist with a deeply artistic nature, I was always asking questions and expressing emotions that made the leadership uncomfortable. I was almost expelled from the church – seriously – for laughing at a joke that our pastor made in the middle of a sermon. In high school I began reading the great works of Western literature – Lewis, Tolkien, Tolstoy, Dickens, etc. – and I became increasingly embarrassed by the fact that my faith tradition had produced nothing more lasting or profound than the “Left Behind” novels and Thomas Kinkade.

This led to a full-on faith crisis in college. I knew there was no place in the Evangelical movement for an aspiring scholar and artist. A ceiling had been imposed on the Christian faith; and the ceiling was exceedingly low. I had read enough history and theology to know that it hadn’t always been like this; that for nearly 1,500 years the Church had given us the greatest intellectual, literary, and artistic flowering the world had ever known. It was the Christian synthesis of Greek, Roman, and Jewish civilization that gave the West its cathedrals, its hospitals, its universities, its philosophy, and its system of law. It was Christianity that pained the Sistine Chapel and wrote the Divine Comedy. It was Christianity that taught St. Thomas how to reason and St. Francis how to love.

I was jaded and angry. I wanted to live in a world where my faith had relevance and meaning. I could no longer belong to a faith where “soul-winning” was the highest priority, while the bodies in which the souls lived were left naked and hungry because the world was just approaching its inevitable fiery destruction and why should it matter what we did here? I wanted to live by a faith that made sense of ME, of my own experiences, of my creativity, my ambitions, and my seemingly-relentless striving after greatness. I was tired of box churches and Christian radio, and I wanted to hide away somewhere in liturgy and sacrament. I wanted to master Aquinas and learn to be in awe of God through the use of my reason. I wanted to love God with my whole heart and mind. I knew I was wretched and poor and blind, and I had been born into a lie, and I wanted out of out. I felt I was either going to become an atheist or a Catholic.

Were you speaking to a 1st century Christian (in Greek, which nearly all of them spoke) the above would make no sense, as you would have just said “Sin cannot simply be sin”. “Hamartia” is the very word that the New Testament uses. In other “sin” is just an English translation and you shouldn’t try to make it bear much theological weight. St Paul never said or heard that word (or any other word in our language)

I was speaking about original sin, but I appreciate your and Rod’s efforts to elide the issue. Original sin is obviously very important to Paul. If it didn’t have much weight then really I’d have very little use for Christ. The all mean are equal and love you neighbors stuff is obviously for saps if there is no burden of sin that needs to be relieved. I mean if we are going to be empirical about the only thing that is proof positive false in the Bible is that all men are equal.

Regarding the subtopic that has developed in this discussion about Protestant fundamentalism’s repression of women writers/teachers – my observation is that it is a little sister argument to the bigger sister argument of feminism’s, that women are perpetually oppressed by the patriarchy. If one rejects feminism’s general claims (which I do), one should reasonably also reject the idea of the particular oppression of women within fundamentalism.

The idea, as with the larger ideas of generic feminism, rests upon the conflagration caused by the subjective distaste expressed by many women (as well as many agreeable male observers) of the experiences they have had in their lives. These experiences are projected beyond their proper context.

As with those proponents of general feminism, I’m not arguing that some women in fundamentalism didn’t experience subjectively distasteful things, or even that objectively bad things didn’t happened to some. Of course I wouldn’t argue against this – with any group of people these sorts of things are inevitable at least to some extent.

What I am arguing is that the placing of their experiences in the proper context of the experiences of all fundamentalists, men and women (in parallel with the experiences of women in the context of the experiences of all of humanity), shows that there is no particular phenomenon of repression or oppression of women.

You might be right about not thinking about sex while having it, but it is a good thing to think about it before and after, and put it into its proper place in one’s life, no?

That can be amusing to do, but not if we think our thoughts about sex are more important than sex itself. If we think the proper place of the mind is to control sex and tell us how it should be done, who we should do it with and why, I think we are making a big mistake. We have to ride the tiger, not imagine we are in charge of it. Same with God. It’s something bigger than we are. Of course, fear tells us otherwise, and so there’s a lot of fear involved in trying to control both sex and religion, especially when we put the two together. It’s the source of a whole lot more problems than just riding the tiger, and learning in practice how to do it, rather than by working some solution out in our minds.